Paula Patton currently stars as a high-powered entertainment attorney, Daniella Hernandez, in the BET+ series “Sacrifice.”
In the series, Daniella mitigates the complex lives of her rich and famous clients with the help of her resourceful assistant Tamika (V Bozeman), a young ex-hacker and tech genius Somwon (Altonio Jackson), and her loyal, jackknife personal bodyguard, Miguel (Nelson Bonilla).
The Covid-19 pandemic hit early 2020. Still, as we move toward the end of 2021, productivity on set is still profoundly influenced by the consequences of the virus. Movie and television productions were heavily impacted. But the “Scarifice” team managed to get the job done.
During a visit to “The Karen Hunter Show,” Patton spoke about the hurdles the cast faced while filming during the pandemic.
“We made it during the pandemic and I think you just adapt because everybody’s so anxious to get back to work,” she explains. “We’ll figure it out. If it takes a little longer, you got to take tests. […] You just feel so grateful for what you do have when something like this happens. We were just all happy to be at work. We’re like, ”We’ll do whatever it takes’. Thank you, Lord.”
Patton discussed the parallels between her own life and Daniella’s…
“When we meet Daniella, she’s at a crossroads in her life. She’s had alcohol addiction and now she’s sober. And now that’s what’s coming, is that in her sobriety—when she was drinking—she could do anything. She could deceive anyone, manipulate anything. She was willing to turn a blind eye to many things, including her own past,” says Patton.
“But now in this sobriety, she is looking at her life with these new eyes and asking yourself, ‘Am I willing to sacrifice my soul to be a part of this game?’ What you find is you have two women; you’ve got this woman who is fierce and ferocious and a boss, but then there’s this other person. And only the audience gets to see— not the people in Daniella’s world. And she is this young, scared little girl that didn’t get the love she needed. That’s trying to work out these terrible patterns she’s had in her life and sort out the mystery of her parents’ death.”
Patton spoke in-depth about her own battles to overcome addiction.
“You just… It’s just all about forgiveness. Forgive yourself. It’s all good. You did the best you could,” she tells Hunter. “What I knew then… I did the best I knew at the time, and now I know better for me.”
